


Once Upon a Time...a review of the first episode

by shadowkat67



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Criticism, Episode Related, Fairy Tale Elements, Fandom Allusions & Cliches & References, Meta, Multi, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-23
Updated: 2011-10-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22420822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Kudos: 4





	Once Upon a Time...a review of the first episode

**Once Upon a Time** is one of those rare tv shows that plays with my imagination. The sort of thing I'm likely to write meta on and fanfic. Most tv shows - really don't. I mean there's no reason to write meta on 99% of them or fanfic for that matter, because well the story is all there up on the screen. There's no gaps, no...I don't know what it is exactly that triggers my imagination. Buffy did, BSG did not. Nor did Veronica Mars. The Wire did...actually. I came very close to writing McNulty fanfic. And so did Farscape. Game of Thrones didn't - because I have incredibly detailed books.

It doesn't have to be brilliantly written. Often that will turn off the imagination. Example Game of Thrones and Lord of Rings. The denser written stories tend to turn off my imagination. No...it has to appeal to something subconsciously, tweak it.

The story has a rather interesting set up, the most interesting and innovative that I've seen to date. Fairy tale characters have been sent to the real world as a sort of weird purgatory. But their memories of their past lives, the fairy tale world, etc are gone. All they have is their new identities. And much like the inhabitants of the island in _LOST_ , they can't leave the town they have been sent to. The town of Storybrook, Maine. No one visits. No one leaves. Except Emma Swan who was brought there by her son, who she gave up for adoption, and Mayor Regina who adopted the boy. If you try to leave the town - bad things happen. And the town has been to a degree frozen in time. People don't really age there. It's a sort of perpetual purgatory. Much as the island in LOST was a perpetual purgatory. The idea that our lives here are well...spent "doing time" in a sort of weird-ass purgatory. We are, as Robert R Walsh once stated..."just characters in a story of hope".

The idea of being characters in a Story-book isn't new by any stretch of the imagination, but it is an interesting philosophical view. Here, the evil queen in the Snow White story, that is so ingrained in our cultural folklore that we pretty much know the tale by heart, is the villain and Snow White - the reason for her vile deeds. Snow White or rather the version we are most familiar with is a Grimm folktale, collected by the Brothers Grimm in Germany. As stated in The Annotated Brother's Grimm:

>   
>  _More than Beauty in Beauty & the Beast, Snow White has become the quintessentially fair - both beautiful and just - heroine of fairy tales. The innocent, persecuted heroine par excellence, she succeeds in living happily ever after despite the plots designed by her wicked stepmother....[In addition] only the Grimm's version of the story alludes to the heroines complexion in her name. Their fair-skinned heroine became, through the Disney film, an icon of feminine beauty for the latter half of the twentieth century. Sneewittchen, Snow White's name in Low German, is a diminutive form and can be literally translated as "Little Snow White". Disney's film title - by including the seven drawfs with Snow White, dilutes the importance of the heroine and shifts the tale's center of gravity from the relationship between the heroine and her wicked stepmother to the relationship between the heroine and the her seven comic sidekicks._  
> 

  


What is interesting is now, over 50 years later, the relationship is shifting back in the opposite direction.

Again, according to the Annotated Grimm - _the Walt Disney version so overshadowed other versions of the story that it is easy to forget that the tale is widely disseminated across a variety of cultures._

Fairy tales were the first urban legends. Told orally back and forth over time. They are largely tales of survival. Simplestic on the surface, but with strong archetype's and psychological themes lurking underneath. The Snow White tale is essentially one about two women. The men are not the main characters. While the seven dwarfs and Prince Charming save her in the folk-tale with the evil Stepmother Queen fading into the background or in the Disney version falling off a cliff, in the tv series...there appears to be another ending or should we say beginning, for here the ending of the fairy tale, which does not end with happily ever after, is the beginning of the tv series. It is worth noting that not one, but two Snow White films are being released next year - and in those as well, the hero is the female. A post-modernist and revisionist view of an old tale?

  
The twist in this version - Snow White and her Prince Charming defeat the evil Queen, only to have her rip their happiness and happily ever after away from them the day their child is born, along with their child for that matter- is chock full of metaphors. The savior is their child. They end up sending their child away from them in the hopes she'll return as foretold, one day, to save them all. They lose their happiness with their child. And their child is the key for them to regain it. Hope lives in the next generation. And their child in the story is brought back to them - to their rescue not by chance, but by the direct actions of their grandson who their child gave up. Sort of the reverse of the Terminator tale - instead of John Connor's father going back in time to save his mother and create him so he can save humanity, Emma Swann's mother sends Emma's son, albeit unknowingly,  
to find Emma and bring her to Storybrook to save them all. Nice twist.

Told like children's story, through a child's eyes, or in reality two abandoned children's eyes - a little boy and his biological mother - both lost to each other and their families...this tale, much like LOST before it, is a tale about losing oneself and the journey to regain that sense of self or sense of purpose, if it such a thing can be accomplished. The journey towards hope. When Emma Swann comes to Storybrook, time begins again, it is no longer frozen.

While the episode was admittedly clunky with its dialogue...it is only the pilot, and I've read that it only gets better. Also unlike the other series I've seen to date, it seems to be the most hopeful. Referencing cultural tales that lie deep inside all our childhoods...tales told by mother's to their children. Fairy Tales. Who are these characters? And who are they here in our world? What is their mirror reflection?

Unlike Bill Willingham's decidedly nihilistic and at times misanthropic and misognyistic take on the same trope, this feels lighter somehow, and more open, with less rigidity. There's a horror element here, of course. But not as pronounced. And the show likewise doesn't appear to take itself too seriously.

I rather liked the twists and turns in it, which I did not foresee or find predictable. Not since Buffy have I seen a show that had this many interesting metaphors skirting about above and beneath the surface. Or for that matter, played with my imagination. Don't get me wrong - I don't think it is as good as Buffy was nor would I say that I see myself falling for it in that way. But it does play with my mind in somewhat the same ways. Also there's a heroine at the center - who I can identify with, who for once isn't tiny, 18, and victimized. Emma Swann has had her tough times...but she's a realist. Tough. Can take care of herself. And an adult.

Also there's no Prince Charming to the rescue, he lies in a coma in intensive care, with his wife unknowingly caring for him.  
No, the hero here is a bail bonds woman, hunting a way out of lonliness and a sense of family and community. On her birthday she wished upon a candle shaped like a star, that she would not be alone on it, and her son showed up at her door - as if by magic. That scene oddly resonated for me. The feeling of being a lone, and searching for community. That the world would be better if we could break the curse some evil queen laid upon it. The idea of hope.


End file.
